


A Frustratingly Decent Proposal

by aurilly



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Pining, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 12:35:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8533297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: This, this right here, in the middle of his destroyed living room, with his bedroom wall covered in inexplicable nonsense, and Loki giving him that sly, fond, infuriating little smile… This was Bucky’s life.

  He loved his life.
A half AU in which the space people are still from space, and the humans lead somewhat more regular lives. (Unfortunately, Bucky didn’t get to read this summary.)





	

Bucky and Steve had a standing Wednesday afternoon date at Ignazio’s. Every week, just the two of them, with the same order of pitchers of beer and two large pies with the works. They would have preferred Jiuliana’s around the corner, but the line was always too long. They’d never even tried for Grimaldi’s.

“What are you doing after this?” Bucky asked as he refilled their glasses. “I was thinking I could come over and we could—”

Steve shook his head. “There’s nothing I’d like better, but I have to pack. I have a 5am flight.”

“Where to this time?”

“Classified,” Steve said. “Sorry.”

Bucky shrugged. “I just wanted to know what souvenir to ask for.”

“I probably won’t have time to shop anyway, not if I want to be back in time for my class on Friday. Hey, if you don’t hear from me by…”

Bucky gestured at him with a floppy slice, the cheese sliding down as he waved it in the air. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll come up with an excuse to tell Sam. I know the drill.”

Bucky’s phone erupted into the _Jaws_ theme music that he had long ago programmed as Loki’s ring. It had been between that and the Darth Vader theme.

He ensured that his mouth was as full of pizza as possible when he picked up and drawled, “Hey.” 

Loki’s long-suffering groan was everything Bucky had been aiming for.

“I need you here. Now.” The location wasn’t even in question. Loki rarely left their apartment.

“Well, nice to hear from you, too.”

Steve caught Bucky’s eye and mouthed, ‘What now?’ Bucky rolled his eyes in a way that said, ‘The usual.’ Steve shook his head.

“Just come.” Loki’s voice was tense, his usual obnoxiousness tinged with panic, not teasing. He was a dick, but he was only this offensively imperious when something was seriously wrong. 

Bucky went on instant alert. “Are you okay?” 

The forced placidness of Loki’s tone made the silent alarm bells ring harder. “There’s a ferry leaving the Dumbo pier in, let’s see, five minutes. If you make your excuses now, you can be home in twenty. You should even have time to wrap up a slice for me. Oh, and ask Steve to bring back a bit of lava.”

“How do you—”

“Tick tock,” Loki interrupted. Followed by the silence of an ended call.

“What’s he want now?” Steve asked. 

“Wouldn’t say. I should probably go, though.” Bucky fished through his wallet for cash. “I think something’s wrong.”

“Are you sure? Remember when he made you leave work because there were fruit flies in your apartment and he thought they were harbingers of evil?” Steve had long ago stopped trying to understand Bucky and Loki’s friendship. Instead, he had resigned himself to keeping a watchful eye on their oddly sustainable yet still dysfunctional co-habitation. However, he was also always ready to jump in and save Bucky whenever he might need it (and sometimes even when he didn’t).

“I think this is legit,” Bucky said. “They’re buried deep, but Loki does have tells.”

“If you say so. I’ll call you as soon as I’m back.”

“You’d better.” Remembering what Loki had said, Bucky added, on a guess, “And, uh, bring me back a lei?”

 _”What?”_ Steve sputtered. “How did you know where I’m—” 

“I guess I do now. Get some lava, too, while you're at it. See ya!” Bucky took his plate to the front and got them to wrap up the two slices. Then he ran down the block to the pier, just in time to catch the Williamsburg-bound ferry. 

Exactly twenty minutes later, he jogged into his apartment to find Loki sitting on the floor, staring blankly at one of the dining chairs on the other side of the room. Whatever reserves of chutzpah Loki had drawn upon to make that phone call were now drained. Bucky hadn’t seen him this destroyed since the night they’d met. Coffee mugs, cereal bowls, and a speaker lay smashed in pieces on the floor.

“Loki?”

Loki bit both his top and bottom lip and pulled into himself even more than usual. Bucky went to sit beside him. 

“Is the couch bothering you?” Bucky asked, trying to tease it out, since Loki, a difficult bastard even at the best of times, wasn’t likely to explain in any kind of normal way.

Loki’s gaze remained fixed on the dining chairs. “I received a message from my brother.”

Talk about fucking bombshells. In their three years together, this was the first Bucky had heard of Loki having a brother. Loki never mentioned any family at all. As far as anyone knew, he had burst into existence fully formed on the stretch of highway Bucky had first found him on. 

“How long have you been in touch for?” Bucky asked next, still feeling this out.

Loki gave him a pained look. “Not before today.” 

“All right. What did he say?”

Loki gestured at Bucky’s bedroom door. “See for yourself. The oaf couldn’t even get the correct room. Typical.”

Not knowing what to expect, Bucky went into his room. He saw the message immediately. He couldn’t miss it. It looked like someone had taken a blowtorch-assisted scalpel to the wall over his bed. Letters, at least four inches tall, had been scratched in a clumsy scrawl. Bucky hadn’t known about a brother until a minute ago, but if he’d ever imagined Loki having one, these were exactly the kind of over the top, cracked out communication habits they would have—lots of dramatic gestures and property damage. However, while the mode of communication fit Loki’s personality, the message itself didn’t make any sense.

_Father finalizing new alliance with Laufey. Imminent plans to unite you with Beilestir. Arrangements being made for your return._

Bucky read the confusing words three times before tramping back to the living room. Gesturing behind him, he asked, “Couldn’t he have, I don’t know, texted? Sent a card? Found you through LinkedIn? Did he have to destroy my wall?”

“No, he could not. He must have broken into my mother’s chambers and sent this missive in deepest secrecy.”

“Uh.” Bucky didn’t know how to respond to that. Taking a step back in the conversation, he asked next, “Is it in some sort of code?”

“No, it’s all too literal,” Loki moaned.

“What’s it say?

Loki looked up, dead-eyed and derisive. “Surely you can read. I’ve seen you do it before.”

“Stop it,” Bucky snapped in the tone that he alone was able to use on Loki. He sat down beside him, his back to the wall, too.

Loki shrugged his head into his shoulder and nuzzled his cheek against it: his way of apologizing. “I knew this would be difficult, but I had no idea exactly how difficult. There is too much I’ve never told you.”

“Like, _anything?_ ”

Loki’s tightly pressed lips curved up into a half smile. “Like that.”

Bucky half-smiled back. This, this right here, in the middle of his destroyed living room, with his bedroom wall covered in inexplicable nonsense, and Loki giving him that sly, fond, infuriating little smile… This was Bucky’s life. 

He loved his life.

Loki wasn’t always like this, not with him. They had fun most of the time, in their own weird way that not even Steve truly understood. Bucky could and would put up with a lot—with _this_ periodic bullshit, even—for what they had. He liked being needed, always had, and Loki needed him desperately, even though part of their rapport involved Loki pretending he no longer did. 

“You don’t have to start at the beginning,” Bucky said. “Wherever you think it’ll be easiest to get the gist.” When Loki remained silent, he tried a different tack. “What’s Laufey?”

“Laufey is a he, not a what.” With more clarifying energy this time, Loki elaborated, “I am to be returned to him and his people. Shipped back like a purchase that, on second thought, has been deemed unnecessary. That is what the message says. My brother, in his well-meaning but clumsy way, is trying to prepare me.”

“Right,” Bucky whispered to himself, because that explanation hadn’t helped at all.

But it was enough to get Loki going. He plowed ahead, talking more to himself than to Bucky. “Thor means to warn me, but to what end, I do not know. There is no hope in fleeing. Even if I had the means to leave this realm, Heimdall would find me. They will take me back and force me to spend the rest of my life among monsters in a frozen wasteland. Force me to mate with them. First banishment, now this debasement. How much punishment do I deserve? How low does the All-Father need to see me brought?” 

“Are _you_ talking in code?” Bucky asked when the seemingly rhetorical pause went on for awhile.

“They’re sending me home,” Loki exploded, although Bucky knew he wasn’t angry with him. “They’re sending me home and then they’re sending me away again, to a banishment much worse and more permanent than here. Without Thor, without…” He met Bucky’s eyes just before trailing off. The flare of temper dissolved into dejection, and he dropped his head back into his knees. 

In a move that left Bucky’s heart pounding, Loki reached, blindly, and ever so tentatively, for Bucky’s hand, grasping the fingers that Bucky let him find. It was the first time they’d done this since those awful months, just after they’d first met, when everything had been such shit. Since before Loki had recovered enough to pretend everything was fine, and before Bucky had recovered enough to let him pretend. Bucky didn’t miss those days, but he had missed this.

But it sounded… It sounded as though Loki was thinking of leaving him. Bucky’s heart slowed to a frozen half-beat that felt uncomfortably like… like before. The darker days even before he'd found Loki—before he’d found Steve again, even.

“Don’t let them.” Bucky had no idea what Loki was talking about, and even less idea of how to help, but he sure as hell wasn’t letting Loki go without a fight. “Don’t let them—whoever they are—take you.”

“I can no more control this than I could my arrival here. I have ever been but a tool for Odin, to be kept or discarded, per his whim.”

“Odin?”

“The man I once thought to be my father,” Loki snarled. 

“Loki… I’m not really following. All I’ve got so far is that you’ve got a brother, and you’re adopted, and you were sent away, but now they want you back, and they want you to marry someone who lives in a place you don’t like. And you can’t run away because there’s a tracker or someone who’d find you. That all… that makes sense. Sort of. I guess.”

Loki looked up and nodded, his refreshingly chill fingers intertwined with Bucky’s. He seemed very tired, and his eyes were sad when he said, “I suppose this is the moment where I clarify that I am not quite as human as I appear. You all owe Natasha a hundred dollars. I’ve never seen Downton Abbey, but otherwise, she is correct.”

“You knew about the bet?” Bucky asked. He’d get to everything else later. Like the fact that Loki had just admitted to being an alien, because… what? That couldn’t be right. But, ages ago, Sam _had_ posed the question “what the fuck is that guy’s deal?” and had written it on his kitchen whiteboard to solicit potential answers. Somehow, after many beers, it had turned into a bet. Natasha had written ‘Loki is an alien who learned English by watching Downton Abbey.’

“Of course I knew about the bet,” Loki said. “Natasha may be discretion personified, but Sam and Steve are pathetically transparent.”

Bucky reached with his free hand to hook his index finger around the strap of his bag and drag it closer. He fished out the wrapped up pizza. “Eat this and tell me. Tell me everything. Start over.”

After a few bites, Loki began to talk. It came out in fits and starts, around swallowed bites. 

“I come from a place at the far reaches of the universe called Asgard. My adoptive father is Odin, King of Asgard. My adoptive brother is Thor. My mother is Frigga. The watcher of the Realms is named Heimdall. We are the basis of many of the Norse myths studied in this world. Our worst enemy is Laufey, king of the Frost Giants, a race of monsters who inhabit another realm called Jotunheim. This Laufey happens to be my actual father, a discovery I made only shortly before arriving here. It seems that Odin stole me as a babe from Jotunheim. I was cast from Asgard after some… actions I took upon learning of my heritage. You found me shortly after my arrival here. And here I have remained, stripped of my magic and cut off from everything I have known. Which brings us to today. Through magical means practiced mainly by Frigga, Thor has warned me that Odin means to marry me to Laufey’s son Beilestir.”

“Wait, but…”

“But Beilestir is my brother, you ask?” Loki filled in, even though, no, Bucky hadn’t gotten that far yet. “Yes, I am to marry him, even so. It is customary among their people. Yet another example of their barbarous nature. Have you any more questions?” 

Yeah. Yeah, Bucky did. He had so many questions he didn’t even know where to start. 

Therefore, he didn’t. He decided to keep the conversation to themes he could understand, and leave the aliens and realm watchers and myths for another day. All that mattered was that Loki might leave. Loki might be made to leave and marry someone he didn’t want to. 

(Someone who, a quietly confused, longing, and stifled part of him regretted, wasn’t Bucky.)

“No one can _make_ you marry anyone,” he argued. “Much less your own brother.”

“Bucky. Dear, sweet, clueless Bucky.” Loki’s tone was condescending and fond at the same time. “You know nothing of my origins. How can you be so sure I don’t come from a culture that accepts all this?”

“I’ve never heard of a culture with arranged incestuous gay marriages. That’s weirdly progressive and backward all at once.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Loki peered at Bucky. “You seen less perturbed than I expected.”

“Honestly?” Bucky confessed. “It’s hard to be ‘perturbed’ when I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”

“Let me try again.”

* * *

It really wasn’t that bad once Bucky forced himself to stop thinking and just listen. He wasn’t sure which of the unintelligible words were places, names or concepts, but it didn’t matter. He got Thor, he got Frigga, he got Odin and Asgard. He got the Jotun. He got that some kind of shit had gone down.

Most importantly, he got how scared and unhappy Loki was. Even though it was the only thing Loki wasn’t talking about, it was the part that was most crystal clear, and the only part Bucky cared about. Whether the rest of it was real or an insanely elaborate metaphor was something to figure out later.

“If you don’t want to go back, I’ll help you stop them,” he promised.

“You mean well, but you are merely a mortal. You can’t fight against power like this—”

“I won’t let them take you.”

Loki sighed. “I knew you would be like this. This is why I didn’t want to tell you. I wouldn’t have if Thor’s stupidity hadn’t made secrecy an impossibility.”

“You would have just disappeared on me?” Insult to fucking injury, Bucky thought.

“I would have left a note.”

_”What?”_

“I must confess, I didn’t expect you to care this much.”

“Of course I care! You’re—”

“I’m not your best friend,” Loki interrupted, with uncharacteristic bitterness. Okay, the bitterness was characteristic, but not about this topic. “We both know that.”

“Well…” Bucky didn't know how to answer without conveying either too little or more than was wise.

“Which is why I’m surprised. But not unmoved. I…” Loki swallowed, and grew a little softer. “You took me in when I was at my lowest, and you have made my time here bearable. I will never forget this kindness.” 

It was the nicest thing Loki had ever said. Not just to Bucky, but to anyone about anything. Ever. The words hung between them, but Bucky didn’t know what to do with them, not now, when someone was trying to take Loki from him. 

“There’s gotta be something we can do.”

“There is no getting between the All-Father and one of his schemes. Believe me, I have tried.”

In that moment, the quietly confused, regretful longing that Bucky had always tried to stifle decided to assert itself. What was either the greatest idea ever, or the most boneheaded, popped into his head.

“Oh no,” Loki said. “I know that look. You’ve just had a terribly stupid idea, haven’t you?”

Well, that answered the question, but Bucky had already opened his mouth to run with it. “In this culture of yours, can people get married twice? I mean, have two spouses at the same time?”

“No, no of course not,” Loki said, disgusted, as though it were the most outlandish thing he’d ever heard of.

“Look, you’re the one not batting an eye at forced incest. How am I supposed to know what’s okay and what isn’t?”

“It doesn’t matter. Beilestir isn’t married and neither am I.”

“But what if you _were_ married? What if you married me?” Bucky blurted out before he lost his nerve.

Loki paled even more than usual. “You? I can’t…”

“We could go down to Borough Hall right now, get the license, get married tomorrow afternoon. Easy-peasy.”

Loki simply stared.

“Look,” Bucky continued, “if being married to someone—anyone—will help, I’ll do it. Nothing has to change.”

Only now, it seemed, did Loki see how serious Bucky was being, because his whole expression turned almost awestruck. “You really mean to do this for me, don’t you?”

“Of course. You’d do it for me, wouldn’t you?”

“I…”

“I mean, if for some reason I was about to be pushed into an arranged marriage with a brother I don’t know,” Bucky clarified, narrowing the parameters to make it easier for Loki to give the answer he wanted to hear.

“I suppose I would. If I couldn’t think of a better solution.”

“Well, can you? Can you think of better solution?”

“Not at the moment, but—”

“Neither can I. And it sounds like there isn’t much time to think of one.”

“No, I don’t think there is. Thor wouldn’t have sent that message if things had only been at a preliminary stage.”

Now that it sounded like Loki was going to agree, that this was maybe really going to happen, Bucky started thinking it through, a little too late. A whole host of problems became evident. 

“Would you still have to go back, or could we just stay here?” he asked first.

“I don’t know. I assume we would have to go to Asgard for a time, in order to put you through the customary rites. Nothing painful,” Loki added quickly. 

“But I’d still get to see Steve, right? We’d move back here or I could come back for visits or he could come visit us in space or… wherever?”

“I’m sure something could be arranged.”

“Then I’m in. That’s pretty much my only requirement.”

Loki seemed to be thinking through the ramifications, too. “You can, of course, entertain yourself during this arrangement,” he said quietly. When Bucky raised his eyebrows in confusion he explained, “In terms of other partners, I mean. You needn’t tie yourself to me in spirit. This is but an arrangement between friends.”

The disappointment Bucky felt at this speech was the first in what was sure to be a series of aches, but Bucky was nothing if not accustomed to pain. He put on a brave face and cloaked himself in protective logic. “This only works if the story is that we eloped because we’re so in love. We can’t sell that if I’m screwing around.”

“Yes,” Loki said after a moment’s hesitation. “That is true.”

“And you’ll still have to work fast to think of something else.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I’m getting this right, this plan just buys you a little time. We can, uh, pretend to be in love for as long as we can, but it’s never going to be long enough. As soon as I’m dead, they’ll be hounding you again. Seven years or seventy years doesn’t sound like much to you people.”

Loki tilted his head and peered at Bucky, quiet and conflicted. “You’re willing to play this charade for the rest of your life?”

“I told you way back when that I’d be there for you, as long as you need me. Just turns out you’ll need me for longer than I realized. Longer than I can technically even give you.” He took a deep breath. “So… You in?”

Loki nodded. “Yes, I’m in.”

They both realized that they had never stopped holding hands, which made shaking on it difficult. But Loki gave Bucky’s fingers a squeeze, and Bucky pressed his sneaker against Loki’s bare foot, and that sufficed. 

“We can still make it to Borough Hall for the license if we leave now,” Bucky said, when the silence had lingered a little too long. “We can take the L to the 4/5.”

“No,” Loki said. “I’ll call a taxi. We might as well give this _some_ sense of occasion.” He grimaced unreadably at Bucky and continued, completely deadpan, “We _are_ madly in love, after all.”

Bucky grimaced back and parroted, “Yeah. After all.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to post this because I did enjoy the idea, and was sad that it's been languishing on my hard-drive for over a year. At this point, I doubt I'll continue it, but on the off-chance that one day I do, I'll start marking it as chapter #/?.


End file.
